It appeared that after the little arrangement between Mr Somerville and my father, and when I had gone to join my ship in America, they had had some communication together, in which Mr Somerville disclosed, that having questioned his daughter, she had ingenuously confessed that I was not indifferent to her.  She acknowledged, with crimson blushes, that I had requested and obtained a lock of her hair.  This Mr Somerville told my father in confidence.  He was not, therefore, at liberty to mention it to me; but it sufficiently accounts for his astonishment at my seeming indifference; for the two worthy parents had naturally concluded that it was a match.

Confounded and bewildered by my asseveration, my father knew not whose veracity to impeach; but, charitably concluding there was some mistake, or that I was, as heretofore, a fickle, thoughtless being, considered himself bound in honour to communicate the substance of our conversation to Mr Somerville; and the latter no sooner received it, than he placed the letter in Emily’s hands—­a very comfortable kind of avant-courier for a lover, after an absence from his mistress of full three years.

I arrived at the hall, bursting with impatience to see the lovely girl, whose hold on my heart and affection was infinitely stronger than I had ever supposed.  Darting from the chaise, I flew into the sitting-room, where she usually passed her morning.  I was now in my twenty-second year; my figure was decidedly of a handsome cast; my face, what I knew most women admired.  My personal advantages were heightened by the utmost attention to dress; the society of the fair Acadians had very much polished my manners, and I had no more of the professional roughness of the sea than what, like the crust on the port-wine, gave an agreeable flavour; my countenance was as open and as ingenuous as my heart was deceitful and desperately wicked.

Emily rose with much agitation, and in an instant was clasped in my arms:  not that the movement was voluntary on her part; it was wholly on mine.  She rather recoiled; but for an instant seemed to have forgotten the fatal communication which her father had made to her not two hours before.  She allowed me—­perhaps she could not prevent it—­to press her to my heart.  She soon, however, regained her presence of mind, and, gently disengaging herself, gave vent to her feelings in a violent flood of tears.

Not at the time recollecting the conversation with my father, much less suspecting that Emily had been made acquainted with it, I cannot but confess that this reception surprised me.  My caresses were repulsed, as coming from one totally disqualified to take such freedom.  She even addressed me as Mr Mildmay, instead of “Frank.”

“What may all this mean, my dearest Emily,” said I, “after so long an absence?  What can I have done to make so great an alteration in your sentiments?  Is this the reward of affection and constancy?  Have I so long worn this dear emblem of your affection next my heart, in battle and in tempest, to be spurned from you like a cur on my return?”